


Your Hands Protect the Flames

by UchiHime



Series: Icarus [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Can be read as a stand alone, Deaf Clint Barton, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-17 03:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3512960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UchiHime/pseuds/UchiHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint doesn’t want to spend his next Heat alone. But Clint also doesn’t want to risk growing to care about another person just to lose them.</p><blockquote>
  <p>    <em>Clint opens his eyes. He’s lying in his bed in Avenger’s Tower,far away from beaches and deserts and dead men who love him. He lies still and just breaths through the pain of remembering. Remembering gapped teeth and a crooked smile. Brown skin and a freckled face. And the plans they’d made for a future they never saw. </em><br/></p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Your Hands Protect the Flames

**Author's Note:**

> If you're following me on tumblr, you may have seen me complaining about "that damn fic" and "that damn series." Well, this is prequel number 1 of that damn series. I almost don't want to post it. I kinda want to post the main story first and then posts the prequels after that, but the main story isn't finished yet and I really just want to have something from the series up. So yeah, here you go.
> 
> Title from the Bastille song Icarus.  
> 

** **

Clint knows he’s dreaming because he’s happy. He’s on a beach, sandwiched between two dead men, except they’re alive and they’re warm and they love him. The problem with dreaming about the dead is knowing none of it’s real. The sand between his fingers were never on a warm sunny beach; it belonged to a blistering hot desert where young boys became men and never saw home again. The arms around him wouldn’t be there holding him when he woke, because the dead slept only in memory and not in his bed. He doesn’t want to wake. He’s happy in his dream, but it’ll hurt to remember it when he open his eyes.

Clint opens his eyes. He’s lying in his bed in Avenger’s Tower, far away from beaches and deserts and dead men who love him. He lies still and just breaths through the pain of remembering. Remembering gapped teeth and a crooked smile. Brown skin and a freckled face. And the plans they’d made for a future they never saw.

A flashing light draws Clint’s attention. Ever since Clint had started removing his hearing aids before bed, Jarvis had used lights to get his attention. Clint turns towards the light and the digital display on the wall reads, “Sergeant Barnes asked that if you woke before morning, I inform you he’s on the roof.”

“Thanks, Jarvis,” Clint says, pushing himself into an upright position. He knows without a doubt that the reason he’d dreamt of dead men tonight, was because of what he’d been thinking about before bed. He had an un-medicated Heat coming up and he’d been entertaining thoughts of not spending it alone.

He leaves his hearing aids on the bedside table and doesn’t bother with shoes as he makes his way towards the rooftop. He finds Bucky exactly where he thought he’d be, sitting in a half concealed corner of the roof that offered a decent view of the city below. There’s a small dish of what Clint knows holds a mixture of peanuts and jelly beans next to Bucky, and one of Clint’s slingshots in Bucky’s left hand.

Bucky looks up at Clint’s approach. He opens his mouth to say something, but Clint stops him by tapping a finger against his own cheek near his ear then tapping it again against the corner of his mouth. Bucky nods and turns his attention towards the snack dish. Clint could, and often did, rely on reading lips when he wasn’t wearing his aids, but Bucky knew and accepted that if Clint wasn’t wearing his aids, it was because he didn’t feel like talking. Clint used the ASL sign for “deaf” to indicate he wasn’t wearing his aids, and Bucky didn’t push for more communication than that.

Clint grabs a handful of peanuts and jelly beans from the dish and tosses them into his mouth. He’s not nearly as picky about it as Bucky is. Bucky refused to eat both black and green jelly beans. Clint understood not liking the black, because anise was an acquired taste, but green jelly beans were the second best in the bag. But, given how long it had taken Bucky to actually start admitting he didn’t like things, Clint only teased him about it sparingly.

A black jelly bean is plucked from the dish and fitted into the seat of the slingshot. Metal fingers draw it back and Clint watches the candy arc through the air until he loses sight of it in the dark of the night, if he’d been wearing his aids, he probably would have heard it hit against the target painted on the other side of the roof, but the only way he knows it hit its mark tonight is his faith in Bucky’s aim.

The slingshot is passed to Clint as Bucky helps himself to a handful from the dish, carefully picking over it before eating any of it. Clint shoots a peanut from the slingshot, aiming for a target a few feet to the left of the one Bucky had fired at.

They pass the slingshot back and forward a few more times, before shooting into the darkness loses its entertainment value. They sit in silence after that, both allowing their thoughts to drift away from them with no fear of where they might turn due to the knowledge that they aren’t alone in this moment. Before the sun breaks the horizon, Bucky falls asleep slumped against Clint, with his head on the archer’s shoulder. Clint tries not to think about how much trust is involved in that action.

** … **

“You have someone in mind?” Dr. Finley asks at Clint’s next therapy session. SHIELD field agents had a required psych evaluation every year. Higher clearance field agents like Clint had psych-evals twice a year. After the whole Loki thing in New York, Clint had failed his psych eval and he was given the choice to either see a therapist regularly, or have his field clearance revoked. Clint had chosen to attend therapy sessions, but actually talking during them was something it took him a long time to do.

He liked his therapist, Dr. Cassandra Finley. She was a small, unassuming beta woman, who knew when to push him and when to let him sit in silence and gather his wits. He’d once taken his hearing aids out during a session while she was in the middle of talking, and she’d seamlessly switched to using ASL with an expression on her fact that said “did you really think that would work.” He’d gained so much respect for her that day, he’d begun participating in his sessions without complaint. When Phil had miraculously come back from the dead, he’d booked the extra therapy sessions himself.

Today, he’d broached the subject of not spending his next Heat alone, and Dr. Finley had used some “leading questions” to get him to elaborate.

In the last eight years, Clint had only spent his Heat with someone else twice, and it had been Natasha both times. He’d chosen her because he trusted her, and he loved her, and he’d thought that would be enough. But the love between him and Natasha was more familial than romantic and sharing his Heat with her wasn’t enough to make him forget. Before Natasha, Clint had only ever spent his Heat with someone once, and both of them were dead now.

“There’s an alpha,” Clint admitted.

“Just an alpha? No beta?” Dr. Finley prompted.

Clint shook his head. “Pulling together a balanced triad for casual sex is too much effort.” He’d been in a balanced triad before. He’d had an alpha and a beta who not only put up with his un-omega-like behavior, but had loved him not in spite of but because if it. They’d supported him. And they’d supported each other. And he’d supported them both. And they’d worked. It wasn’t always perfect, but it was suited to them. If he was to enter another triad now, Clint wouldn’t settle for anything less than what he’d had with them; what he’d lost with them.

“But it’s not casual sex, is it?” Dr. Finley asked. Clint gave her a questioning look, so she went on, “You can have casual sex outside of your Heat period, but you don’t. Not anymore at least. Heats are a vulnerable time for omegas. Even the strongest could be taken advantage of. You wouldn’t have just anyone around you during that time. This alpha, if you didn’t already trust them explicably, you wouldn’t even be considering this.”

Clint doesn’t respond. He purses his lips and glances off towards the window. Dr. Finley is used to him doing this by now. She doesn’t push him because she knows he’d just get up and walk out if she does. They spend the rest of his session in silence.

** … **

Bucky drops the knife in his left hand and catches it in his right in a reverse grip at waist level. In the next instant, Clint has Bucky’s right arm pinned behind his back, putting pressure on his shoulder joint in hopes of making him let go of the knife. Bucky drops to the floor in a calculated move, slamming Clint against the mat and pinning him beneath Bucky’s greater weight. The knife is trapped between them now and Clint is completely winded. It was a risky move on Bucky’s part. Either of them could have easily been stabbed. But Bucky has left over self-destructive tendencies from being the Winter Soldier, and Clint was the idiot stupid enough to spar with him.

Alright, it wasn’t fair to call what Bucky did “self-destructive” because he wasn’t genuinely trying to hurt himself. He’d lived as a weapon and a tool, more machine than human, for so long, he’d forgotten that he wasn’t indestructible. He didn’t care about damaging himself, he only cared about completing the job. There was a lack of self-awareness in his fighting that everyone was working towards curing him of, but it was a slow going process.

Clint gets his breath back, but it’s accompanied by a lungful of Bucky’s scent. The scent of _alpha_ and male and bonded, but a weak bond; a couple bond not a triad bond. And everything within Clint that is _omega_ and needing screams that that space had been saved for him. That he could be the missing piece that turns Bucky’s weak couple bond into a strong triad bond. And he could be that without ever knowing who it was occupying the other seat.

As far as anyone knows, Bucky doesn’t actually have a mate. Steve said Bucky hadn’t been bonded when he fell from that train back in 1943, but when Hydra had been discovered within SHIELD and the Winter Soldier had been brought in from the cold, he already had the scent of mated about him. There was no logical explanation for Hydra to bond their Asset to another person, so the conclusion had been drawn that it was a faux bond created through faulty science that gave Bucky his scent.

For a moment, Clint is more dazed by the alpha’s scent than the weight of him on him and he forgets all about their sparring match to just lay there and breathe him in. Then Bucky starts wiggling in an attempt to break free of the hold Clint still has on his arm and Clint is brought back to the situation at hand. There’s a lot of wiggling and grabbing and clinging before they’re separated, on their feet, and back to swinging punches and ducking knives.

** … **

He dreams about birds circling the desert. Except they’re not actually birds. They are men with wings, but only to Clint are they angels. He wants to be up there with them, as he’d been before, held tightly in one’s arms as they coast through the air. To Clint, they are what it means to be happy. Which mean, they are something he could never have.

There’d been a time when he’d hoped. A time of whispered promises in the desert. A time when he was “Hawk” or “The Specialist” instead of “Agent Barton” or “Hawkeye.” And they were “Falcon and Redwing” or “My Favorite Flyboys” instead of “two dead men” or “I don’t want to talk about it.”

They’d planned a future. A private bonding instead of a public wedding, “ _just a small dinner with friends and family instead of an elaborate reception._ ”

“ _If we’re inviting your whole family, ain’t nothing gon’ be small about that dinner.”_

_“As if you don’t have enough extended relatives to fill Yankee Stadium on their own.”_

Two kids, maybe three “ _and I might even carry one if you ask nicely enough.”_

_“Like hell you will. You’re our alpha. You get pregnant and people are gon’ think I’m some kinky ass beta who married two omegas.”_

_“You are some kinky ass beta, though.”_

A house in the city, not suburbia, and a visit to the farm at least once a year. _“Can you picture my freckled ass working a farm? I’d be red and peeling year round.”_

_“No different from here then.”_

_“Let’s not worry too much about the details now. Being together, having each other, that’s all that matters.”_

And in the end, Clint was left alone. In his dream, the sound of a gunshot is the only warning he gets before the two birds come falling from the sky. Clint wants to run and catch them, but he’s too far away.

** … **

Bucky manhandles Clint into his arms while Clint pulls up the next episode of _Doctor Who_. Clint breaks the Nerds Rope he’s eating in half and gives a piece to Bucky. Two minutes later, Bucky hands the sweet back to Clint, only the chewy center left after Bucky nibbled off the hard candy. Clint pops it in his mouth without hesitation. Bucky’s arm is warm around Clint’s waist and he has one leg thrown over Clint’s to keep him securely against him on the narrow space of the couch. They’re closer than what can be considered strictly platonic, but that might just be wishful thinking on Clint’s part.

Steve joins them a few minutes later. He gives only a passing glance to the way Clint and Bucky are pressed so closely together, used to finding them in that position by now. Bucky’s an unrepentant Sci-Fi nerd and by the time he and Clint had bulldozed through the first six Doctors and half of the Star Trek original series, personal space was something they’d stopped caring about. They were on the ninth Doctor now and Bucky was more comfortable with Clint than anyone else in the Tower, save maybe Steve.

Steve takes his customary seat in the armchair to the left of the couch and pulls out his sketch pad. He didn’t like Sci-Fi as much as Bucky and didn’t care much for _Doctor Who_ at all, but sometimes he just liked being around his oldest friend. Clint could understand, sometimes he liked to cuddle with Natasha just for the sake of having her near. Nat wasn’t a tactile person, but she did it for Clint. Better, she always knew how to be just what he needed. She was dual-dynamical and when Clint needed to feel small and as if someone else was in control, she’d be the alpha he needed. When Clint just needed companionship and to feel not alone, she would be a fellow omega at his side.

Bucky’s hand slips into the pocket of Clint’s hoodie and liberates one of the many fun-size candy bars Clint had stuffed there. He raises his arm and tosses whatever candy he’d grabbed to Steve. Steve looks up from his sketchpad long enough to catch the sweet and mumble a ‘thanks.’

They stay as they are for three episodes of _Doctor Who_ , their marathon inevitably cut short by the call to Assemble. The city is under attack by Attuma. They suit up and jump into action.

** … **

“Iron Man, bank to the left just… perfect,” Clint looses the arrow he’d drawn and has already turned his attention towards his team members on the ground by time it hit its mark. He nocks another arrow, but his attended target is taken down by a bullet for he can even line up the shot. He follows the bullet’s trajectory and finds Bucky standing in the window of the building opposite him. “Aren’t you supposed to be ground level, Winter?” Clint asks. He’d been given orders to take his usual position as sniper and eyes in the sky, but Bucky was meant to be Steve’s backup on the ground since Natasha was away on a SHIELD mission.

“You’re the one who noted the civilians in the building,” Bucky says. “Just doing my part to get them to safety.” Clint looses his arrow at the same time Bucky fires and the two Atlanteans that had been trying to sneak up on Steve drop to the ground.

The Atlantean soldiers were not the big issue of the day, though. Attuma had brought a fucking kraken with him. A kraken that was not confined to the sea. It walked across land on, sprayed an acidic ink, shot spikes from its tentacles, stuffed unsuspecting citizens into its beaky mouth, and toppled buildings left and right. Attuma himself seemed to have only a shaky control over it. Thor, Hulk, and the Captain were focusing on containing the kraken, while Iron Man, Hawkeye, and The Winter Soldier were on Atlantean duty. Clint was about 90% sure the kraken was just a distraction, because the Atlanteans seemed to be moving with a purpose away from it.

“Anyone feeling calamari tonight?” Stark asks. He’s following a group of Atlantean soldiers when a stray kraken tentacle entered his path. The repulsor beam he shoots at it makes the kraken do little more than flinch, as if Stark’s famed repulsor technology was little more than a joy buzzer.

Bucky is midway through a snarky comeback when the kraken’s flailing tentacle crashes through the building he’s occupying. “Bucky!” Clint yells, watching the building crumple under the force of the kraken’s blow and bury Bucky beneath the rubble.

** … **

“I thought we lost you for a second there,” Clint says, sitting on the edge of Bucky’s hospital bed but unable to meet his eyes. It had taken everything in him and direct orders from Steve, Tony, and Maria to keep Clint from abandoning his position to dig Bucky out. Protecting the city was more important than saving one man, but knowing this hadn’t stopped Clint’s soul from screaming out. He’d been ready to throw himself off his rooftop perch to rush to Bucky’s side.

“I don’t go down that easily,” Bucky says, though Clint can hear the pain in his voice. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Clint mumbles. It’s a lie. They both know it’s a lie.

“Yeah you were. That’s what you do. Clint Barton’s philosophy: put everyone before yourself, always.”

Clint scoffs and finally looks at Bucky. The soldier is smiling, though there’s a bit of discomfort showing itself on his face. Clint knows that’s there only for his benefit. Bucky was more than capable of hiding his own discomfort, but he knew concealing it would just make Clint worry more. “Sounds more like Bucky Barnes’ philosophy to me.”

“It’s both of ours,” Bucky says with a faint grin. “It’s why we fit so well together. You always put me first and I always put you first and we both get taken care of.”

“Or nothing gets done.” Clint looks away from Bucky and stares at the door instead. It feels like there’s a metal spur in his throat. He’d been sure they’d lost him. It had taken another half hour to deal with the Kraken and Attuma before they could even think about digging Bucky from the rubble. That was a half hour of Bucky lying in a small dark place with a building on top of him. When they’d finally unearthed him, his breathing was so shallow it was almost nonexistent and he wasn’t moving. Clint had thought that was it; he thought he’d lost yet another person he cared about.

Bucky grabbed Clint’s hand and held on to it until Clint turned back to face him. “I’m fine, Clint,” he says slowly enunciating the words carefully so that Clint could read them on his lips as well as hear the steel in his tone present enough to make sure the words sink in. “A little worse for wear, but I’m fine.”

Clint can only look at Bucky, stare into those pale blue eyes, trace his gaze along the stubble on his jaw, catalogue the healing cuts, the purpling bruises, the split lip, the bandage over his reset nose, the dried blood and grime. Clint could only look and think how he never would have recovered from losing Bucky, too.

“Okay,” Clint says, pulling his hand free from Bucky’s and getting to his feet. “You need rest,” he mumbles, already turning for the door.

“Clint,” Bucky calls. Clint pauses for a second but not long enough to hear what Bucky wanted to say. He opens the door and walks out.

** … **

Phil is standing in the doorway, watching Clint with a blank expression. He stays that way for almost a minute, before shrugging and actually entering the room. “Well, you’re not nesting in the ventilation, so you can’t be too bad off.”

Clint refrains from saying that if Phil had shown up just ten minutes earlier or ten minutes later, he probably would have found Clint nesting in the vents. He’d only left his nest because he’d wanted to retrieve something from his room and had gotten distracted looking at it.

“You know,” Phil says, seating himself on the edge of Clint’s bed, “when I gave you that file, it was about helping you move forward, not anchoring you to the past.” Clint had been expecting a visit from either Phil or Natasha. He’d skipped an appointment with Dr. Finley, and Maria had immediately called him to let him know that she’d rescheduled it for him and he would be wise not to skip it again. Clint had gone to the session and said absolutely nothing the whole time he was there. It was like when he’d first started seeing her: they could make him show up, but they couldn’t make him speak.

While he knew Dr. Finley didn’t report the exact details of his sessions because of doctor-patient confidentiality, she did have to give a generalized report of his behavior and whether or not she felt he needed to be taken out of active duty for a while. She’d once told him that she would have had him removed from the field a long time ago if she didn’t feel that it would result in him engaging in unmonitored reckless and self-destructive behavior. Whenever Clint had a negative report, either Phil or Natasha would visit him. He’s glad it’s Phil this time, because he’s the only one who knows the whole story. Natasha knew that Clint had once been part of a triad and that he didn’t like to talk about it, but Phil had been there when Clint was still high on their love and filled with hope. Phil had been there when Clint had come crashing down from that high and lost his way.

Phil picks up a page from the file Clint has spread across his bed. Clint had no doubt that Phil had already read the file before. Clint himself had read in many times. In his darkest hours, it brought him comfort. The impersonal reports of two men who wanted to help the world; two men who had loved Clint and their country. They had died for one despite the other and Clint couldn’t even blame them. He couldn’t hold it against them, because he hadn’t been there. He’d left them in an Afghani desert while he went off to play spy for SHIELD. Because that’s what Clint was. He was a spy and they were soldiers and they’d given their lives for a country Clint had once worked against. It had been a year before Clint had learned of their deaths, he’d convinced himself that they’d just stop loving him.

Phil doesn’t read the page he picked up. He holds it in his hands, but his eyes turn to the same thing Clint it looking at. The picture on the bed is the only one Clint has of them. It’s the only proof that these men once existed outside of memory. “They would hate seeing you like this,” Phil says.

“Their opinions are invalid given that they are dead,” Clint retorts. He takes the paper from Phil’s hand and starts stuffing everything back into the file folder.

Phil frowns. “You want to tell me what’s wrong with you? I was led to believe you were upset over Barnes getting hurt, but it’s more than that.”

Clint could lie, but it would have been futile to do so. Phil knew him too well. They hadn’t worked as handler and asset so long for Phil to still be fooled by Clint’s fibs. “I was going to ask him to spend my heat with me,” Clint admits.

Phil’s frown deepens. “I was not aware that you and Barnes had that kind of relationship.”

“We don’t,” Clint tells him. “I’m not even sure he feels the same way about me as I do him.” Phil doesn’t ask how Clint feels, because Clint’s desire for Bucky to share his heat reveals it.

“He got hurt and it made you remember the risk of loving men who fire guns for a living.” Phil taps the folder and watches Clint’s expression. “You’re scared of losing him like you lost them and you’d whether close yourself off than take that risk.”

“I’m scared that I won’t survive losing him,” Clint states. “When they died, they took all the best parts of me and I thought I would never love again. But what’s left of me found a way to love Bucky and if he dies too, there’ll be nothing of me left.”

“You’re a fool, Clint Barton.” Phil says. “When Sam and Riley died, you mourned them with your whole heart. You broke into pieces and let yourself hurt. But then you gathered up those pieces, put yourself back together as best you could, and kept moving forward. You lost tiny fragments of yourself, but everything that made you who you are is still present and accounted for. Sam and Riley would be spinning in their graves if they knew you were sitting here blaming them for your fear. You forget I was there. I was in that desert with you. I saw the three of you together and I heard the promises you made. What was the biggest promise you made to them?”

Clint buries his face in his hands. He can see them. Sam and Riley and him, sitting under the stars and talking about the future and what they would do if they did or didn’t make it home. _If I never leave this desert, promise me you’ll…_ “Let got and live my fucking life,” Clint whispers. His eyes are burning and he rubs at them furiously to keep the tears from falling.

“Let go, Clint,” Phil says and Clint breaks.

** … **

Bucky’s in the shooting range, firing at a target with a calmness that’s almost cold. He doesn’t so much as look Clint’s way when he enters, though Clint knows he knows he’s there. Clint grabs a gun off the table and stands at the target next to Bucky. He lines up his shot and empties half the clip. Bucky switches from firing with his right hand to his left. His whole demeanor changes. He’s no longer firing with an “almost cold calmness” but more of a complete detachment from brain to trigger finger. He’s more Winter Soldier than Bucky Barnes. He fires only three bullets: heart, neck, and head. If the target had been a real person, any one of those shots would have been a guaranteed kill.

Clint sighs and sets down his own gun. Avengers didn’t take kill shots unless there was no other option, Bucky knew this. Clint himself had told Bucky this when the two of them had first started visiting the shooting range together. Bucky had taken it to mean that kill shots were outlawed even during practice. It was one of the things Bucky had used to define himself as separate from Hydra’s Asset.

“Bucky,” Clint says. Bucky lines up another shot and fires three more bullets. “Buck,” he calls again. “I’m sorry.”

Bucky fires one more shot before lowering his gun. “What was that?” He asks, turning to face Clint.

“I’m sorry,” Clint repeats. “I shouldn’t have just walked away like that.”

“You think I’m upset you walked away?” Bucky scoffs and starts reloading his gun.

“I think you’re mad that I closed myself off instead of talking to you. Because you’ve gotten used to me depending on you when I’m down. I think you’re upset because, even when all I want is silence, I go to you except this time.”

Bucky says nothing, just turns back to the target and starts firing again.

“I needed some time to sort out my thoughts away from you. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could depend on you, it was that I can’t ask you about you.” Bucky keeps firing the gun and Clint keeps talking. “I needed time to decide what I want, but I know what that is now. I want you to spend my heat with me.”

Bucky’s next shot misses the target. “What?” He asks, turning back to face Clint.

“I want you to spend my heat with me,” Clint repeats. “If you want to, that is.” Bucky just stares at Clint, face a mask of disbelief. Clint forces himself to hold his gaze. He swears to himself that he’ll remain Bucky’s friend no matter what his answer is. Because he likes being Bucky’s friend. He likes shooting peanuts and jelly beans from slingshots, sparing in the gym, and gorging themselves of junk food and sci-fi. He’s not going to let their relationship change because of this. He promises.

He’s getting better at keeping his promises.

**Author's Note:**

> There is a playlist that accompanies this series [here](http://8tracks.com/herlastsong/the-wild-winds-around-you).  
> My tumblr is [here](http://ageofclintbarton.tumblr.com).


End file.
